


Maybe He Loved Her

by Titti



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27492526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Titti/pseuds/Titti
Summary: When a plant makes Teal'c unable to lie, Daniel and Vala find out about the fifty missing years in Unending.
Relationships: Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10
Collections: Mistletoe Exchange 2020





	Maybe He Loved Her

**Author's Note:**

  * For [klutzy_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/klutzy_girl/gifts).



"Stop. Asking." Teal'c spooned some of the pudding and ate it. 

"Married? You said we were married. Daniel, you heard him, didn't you?" Vala shifted forward on her chair, inching closer to Teal'c. "Are you lying?"

"You know he can't lie," Daniel said with a little frown. "They are still trying to figure out why those plants we found on P3M-442 have this effect on him and not on us."

"Just to be clear. I can ask him anything and he will tell me the truth," Vala asked.

"And this is why we aren't asking him questions," Daniel said, even though he knew that trying to reason with Vala when she had that look on her face was useless. Teal'c was trying to avoid the questions by eating pudding, but Daniel doubted that it would work for long.

"But _married_? For decades! And we didn't kill each other. I don't even have to ask him that, since we're here," Vala reasoned. "So did we fight a lot?"

"No, you seemed to like each other," Sam said in a monotone tone, before putting down the spoon and getting up.

He barely reached the door, before Vala was up and running after him. Daniel debated staying in the cafeteria, but Teal'c was his friend and Vala could be worse than facing an Ori alone. With a sigh, he got up and caught up with them.

"So did we … get married?" Vala asked.

"You did not, not in the traditional sense," Teal'c said.

"What does that mean? Daniel, what does he mean?" Vala asked.

"I imagine that being alone in a starship with no jurisdiction, there was no legal or binding way to have a marriage. Just a guess," Daniel said, being careful not to pose it as a question, but of course Vala wasn't as considerate.

"Is that what you mean?" she asked.

"Indeed," Teal'c said.

"But did we have a ceremony of sort?" 

Daniel grabbed her shoulders and tried to pull her back as Teal'c turned around. He might be his stoic self and age had mellowed him even more, but Daniel could see the anger there. 

"You did. You got together quickly enough. You got married. You lived together. You considered children, but it was too dangerous and they would be alone if we didn't found a way back. I did not see any sign of animosity except for the normal exchanges married couples might have. Now that you know, stop following me. I will be in my room until they find a way to make me stop talking." Teal'c did an about-face and walked away.

"Don't ask him more," Daniel said.

Vala turned around and faced him. A big smile on her face. She put a hand on Daniel's shoulder while she pressed their bodies together. "But Daniel, don't you want to know? We did the deed for _fifty_ years."

Daniel thought for a moment. He pushed his glasses up his nose and then shook his head. "No, if he wanted us to know, he'd have told us long ago."

"Why didn't he? Because he and Sam didn't get any, and we did. I bet that's the reason," Vala said.

Daniel cracked a smile, because the answer was so very typical Vala. "I don't think that's the case. Have you considered that maybe he wanted to protect us?"

"By not telling us that we're married? How is that helping?" Vala asked.

"That! Exactly that. _We_ are not married. A version of us in a temporal bubble was married, but we stopped being those people the moment we de-aged. We've done different things. We've kept exploring, we're fighting the Oris, we aren't married," Daniel explained patiently.

"We're still those people," Vala answered. "We could have been those people if he just told us."

"No, we couldn't, because we are experiencing different things from what we faced alone in a starship for fifty years." Daniel had a feeling that he'd be saying the same things over and over for a while, and even then he wasn't sure that he'd convince her.

Vala let go of him. Her eyes narrowed. "What you're saying is that you were fine being married to me when we were stuck in a starship alone, but not here where you have options."

"How did you get _that_ from what I said?" Daniel started to walk again.

"Oh sure, run away," Vala said, but she kept up.

"I'm trying to move this to your room and not in the middle of the corridor with people moving around us to get by," Daniel said, refusing to engage until they got to her room. Only once they were in the privacy of her room, he started talking again. "Remember when we went to dinner and you were convinced that it was a date? We should go out on a real date."

"Couldn't we skip all of that and go to the baby making stage? Humans take too long to get there," Vala said, shaking her head. "And we don't actually have to have the baby. Not really eager to do that again with the Ori still out there."

His thoughts went briefly to Sha're, who was so very different from Vala, blushing on their wedding night. He was more likely to blush than Vala. He also didn't want to think about the fact that he was comparing Vala to his dead wife. "Or we could try human customs and date."

She pointed to the bed. "We could start with the baby trying and do the date later."

Daniel took her hands in his. "Vala, I'm not going anywhere. I don't know if we'll get married and be together for fifty years, but I'm sure that in that life, we took our time and when it happened, it was because we both wanted it, and not because we needed companionship or because we were afraid of being alone. I want to do the same here."

Vala smiled that real smile that they seldom saw. "You're just saying that."

Daniel shook his head. "I'm not. I didn't know about our marriage until a few moments ago, but with Teal's unable to go out and SG-1 on stand down, I already asked Landry if I could take you out. I was going to ask you, in a more natural way than this, but since you can't leave well enough alone, would you like to go out with me?"

Vala tilted her head, grinning. "Oh, you're so sweet. Of course I will and you can pay for everything."

Daniel chuckled. "I expected no less. So we'll go out on this date and we go from there," Daniel said.

Vala frowned. "Wait! You do know that I'm a sure thing. We can do this date thing and then we can do… what is it that Cameron called it, the horizontal dance? Right, we can do that. Many times."

Daniel rolled his eyes. "I don't know why I bother with you."

Vala grinned. "Because you love me."

Daniel turned around and walked out without an answer, but there was a smile on his face. Maybe, just maybe, she was right and he loved her, but he wouldn't skip the steps because in another life they were married. He'd do it right and they'd both be happy, because maybe, possibly, he really did love her.


End file.
